POPULAR FICTION

THE COOKBOOK COLLECTOR BY ALLEGRA GOODMAN (Atlantic £12.99)

Some great Pops to start the new year; a real feast of reading and literally so with Allegra ­Goodman’s latest.

Emily and Jess are not just very different sisters, but metaphors for California new and old. Emily is the driven CEO of a super-successful internet start-up, Jess the offbeat philosophy student in search of a meaning to life. While Emily’s company soars into the stratosphere at its Initial Public Offering (stock market launch to you and me), Jess works part-time in a bookshop and hangs with tree-huggers and a rabbi.

There’s an almost infinite number of subplots, one involving the collector of the title, but my favourite bits by far were those contrasting the tune-in, turn-off, drop out lifestyle with the betrayal and swashbuckle of Silicon Valley techies about to hit the financial big time (and then lose it all again).

Computers never seemed so exciting! Goodman is everything it says on her tin - a wonderful, lyrical writer etc - but she also has an astute eye for comedy and some bits of the book are truly hilarious. Read this to sound knowledgeable about internet IPOs when Facebook hits the stock market next year.

APOCALYPSE FOR BEGINNERS BY NICHOLAS DICKNER (Portobello £12.99)

I loved this sharp, funny and wacky romcom from the acclaimed Canadian author of Nikolski. It’s long, hot summer in suburbia when teenage Mickey runs into teenage Hope at the empty municipal stadium.

If you think this already sounds like a game of Consequences you ain’t heard the half of it; Hope lives in a petshop and, her name notwithstanding, comes from a long line of doom-mongers who believe the end of the world is nigh (the exact form Armageddon will take is revealed to them at puberty). Hope is yet to receive her revelation; Mickey however hopes for a few of his own in the meantime.

Does he get them? You’ll have to read it to find out; all I can say is that Dickner gives a whole new meaning to the term nuclear family and you’ll never see either noodles or feminine products in the same way again. I also predict that the last line of the book will end up on tattoos and T-shirts everywhere.

LOVE VIRTUALLY BY DANIEL GLATTAUER (Quercus, £9.99)

I must confess that the prospect of a German novel in which an affair is entirely conducted by email made my heart sink. Hadn’t we been here before? The strange thing is, I rather enjoyed it.

It is quite staggeringly straightforward with no subplots or complexities whatsoever, just two characters on whom the reader is forced to concentrate as their originally accidental encounter turns to mutual intrigue and then to desire.

It’s the kind of book you can read while doing several other things at the same time, but sometimes that’s just what you need.